Diesel Spreads Tick Higher, Remain Below Last Week’s High

Diesel spreads are ticking higher amid the ongoing outage at Shell’s Godorf refinery and low Rhine levels, while the restart of Shell’s Pernis CDU and Total’s Gonfreville unit has kept spreads below last week’s peak.

• Spreads have pulled back from last week’s peak of 21.48$/bbl given the restart of two refineries in Europe.
• Shell has restarted the 200kbpd CDU at the Pernis refinery in the Netherlands last week after it was shut down as an unplanned outage earlier this month. Two vacuum distillation units that were also taken offline at the refinery are expected to restart this week. Argusmedia reported on late last week that the second CDU at Pernis had gone down, causing spreads to spike but the CDU appears to be operating as normal. No other sources have reported on issues with the second CDU at Pernis.
• TotalEnergies’ 249kbpd Gonfreville refinery in France is also restarting an unspecified unit following an outage last week.
• Shell also halted a CDU and VDU at its 187kbpd Godorf refinery in Germany on 15 June. There has been no update on the restart. The halt was likely unplanned as the refinery underwent annual maintenance between 19 April and mid-May.
• Falling Rhine River levels in Germany are also starting to restrict trade and increasing transportation costs ahead of the typically lowest river levels in August-November period. Kaub levels stood at 1.43m on Friday afternoon according to government data.
• Gasoil JUL 23 up 1.2% at 720.25$/mt
• EU Gasoil-Brent up 0.4$/bbl at 18.94$/bbl